Background: The German army began publishing a biweekly magazine
in 1937. This article is the first reporting on the German invasion of
Poland. The claim is that Hitler was completely innocent, indeed that
Poland had plans to take over most of Germany.

Why and For What?

by Dr. F.

A catastrophe has broken over Europe like a sudden hurricane. Even those
not directly involved in the struggle are shocked by its elemental rage.
We Germans were not as surprised, since we had long understood the enemyís
policies and had assumed the day might come when
he would carry out his plans and intentions.

Why are we fighting?

Because we were forced into it by England and its Polish friends.
If the enemy had not begun the fight now, they would have within
two or three years. England and France began the war in 1939
because they feared that in two or three years Germany would
be militarily stronger and harder to defeat. The deepest roots
of this war are in Englandís old claim to rule the world, and
Europe in particular. Although its homeland is relatively small,
England has understood how to cleverly exploit others to expand
its possessions. It controls the seas, important points along
major sea routes, and the richest parts of our planet. The contrast
between England itself and its overseas territories is so grotesque
that England has always has a certain inferiority complex with
respect to the European continent. Whenever a continental power
reached a certain strength, England believed itself and its empire
to be threatened. Every continental flowering made England nervous,
every attempt at growth by nations wanting their place in the
sun led England to take on the policemanís role.

One must understand this to make sense of Englandís German policy from
Bismarck to our own day. England was not happy with the results of the
war of 1870-1871. British sympathies were already on Franceís side, since
for the previous one hundred years it had never had the same fear of France
as it had of Germany. France had secured its own colonial empire, and
its shrinking biological strength left enough room for expansion within
its own natural boundaries. Things were different in Germany. England
knew that the German people were strong when they had good leadership,
and that nature had given them limited, resource-poor territory with a
limited coast. Great Britain kept an eye on Germany, all the more whenever
Germany expressed its strength, even in the most natural ways. The Second
Reich experienced Englandís “balance of power” policy. We know
that England did not want a true balance of power. It wants a situation
in which England is always in a position with the help of its allies to
have its way with a minority of confident, forward-moving nations. Englandís
claims, rooted in the enormous disparity between its home territory and
its overseas possessions, had to lead the English to react in bold and
impudent ways in the face of a German people who under Adolf Hitler were
developing their strength in an unprecedented way.

In the face of the development of National Socialist Germany, England
turned for a second time to a policy of encirclement, the results of which
are today casting their blood-red shadow across the world. We remember
its development clearly. Attempts by England and its vassals to build
a ring around Germany did not have the desired results. The Western democracies
made dramatic efforts to win Soviet Russia. Instead, Adolf Hitlerís hated
Germany made a pact, which is founded on centuries of experience between
Prussian-Germany and Russia.

The Poles were the only remaining Slavic vassal in Eastern Europe. Rather
than dampening the native Polish hatred of ethnic Germans and of German-Polish
peace, and Polandís desire to play the role of the big man, England did
all in its power to feed the fire that was burning between Kattowitz and
Danzig. Their goal was to use the situation, with the remnants of encirclement,
to incite a war with Germany.

The English wanted this war in the crazy hope that it was
their last chance to stop Germanyís growing strength. They passionately
avoided doing anything that might have prevented war. Rather
than encouraging Poland to accept the Führerís generous
proposals to resolve the situation, they encouraged it to let
the deadline pass, thereby providing a reason for war. The Führer
felt obliged to strike back only after Polish troops had crossed
the German border at several places. The German fight is a defensive
fight. We fight because we were forced to fight by the insults
and demands against us, because of the brutal suppression of
ethnic Germans in Poland, and because of the open announcements
that they would do everything in their power to strangle National
Socialist Germany through military or economic means.

This explanation of the German defensive struggle answers the next question:

What are we fighting for?

We are fighting for our most valuable possession: our freedom. We are
fighting for our land and our skies. We are fighting so that our children
will not be slaves of foreign rulers. That is in no way an exaggeration
or empty phrase.

We know the English. We know about Versailles, about the colonies
England stole from us, about the Ruhr, about Golzheimer Heath,
about the starvation blockade. We know that we will be slaves
if we do not win and we know that the goal of Englandís policy
of encirclement is to subject Germany to its will. We know what
that means. We all remember the days when Allied inspectors wandered
around Germany.

We are fighting for Germanyís freedom and for Germanyís right
to be a people that has all it needs to preserve its national
existence. The Führer made unprecedented offers for peace
and understanding to those who are now fighting against Germany.
His attempts were scornfully rejected because they wanted this
fight.

We are fighting for a lasting peace that will make a repetition
of Versailles impossible. For two long decades, it caused an
enormous, constantly bleeding wound among the ethnic Germans
in the East. We are fighting to save our children from the unbearable
threats of the Western democracies, driven by envy and hatred.
We are fighting for a happy future in a free Germany in a
peaceful Europe.